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Larry Nassar files for new sentencing on Eaton County sexual assault charges

The move follows similar action taken in Ingham County, where Nassar's court-appointed appellate attorneys sought a new sentencing and for Judge Rosemarie Aquilina — who in January sentenced Nassar to 40 to 175 years in prison and told him she was singing his "death warrant" — to be disqualified from the case.

CHARLOTTE, Mich. - Larry Nassar has now appealed his sentences in all three courts where he pleaded guilty to either sexual assault or child pornography charges.

The latest appeal came on Monday, when his court-appointed appellate attorneys filed a motion in Eaton County Circuit Court seeking a new sentencing hearing on the three sexual assault charges he pleaded guilty to in November. They also requested a new judge, although not in a separate motion.

The move follows similar action taken in Ingham County, where Nassar's court-appointed appellate attorneys sought a new sentencing and for Judge Rosemarie Aquilina — who in January sentenced Nassar to 40 to 175 years in prison and told him she was singing his "death warrant" — to be disqualified from the case.

In April, he appealed the 60-year prison sentence he received after pleading guilty to three child pornography charges in federal court. The appeal is still pending.

A spokeswoman for the Michigan Attorney General's Office, which prosecuted Nassar, said they are reviewing the Eaton County motion and declined to comment further. The AG's Office opposed both motions filed in Ingham County.

Nassar, 54, formerly of Holt, sexually abused hundreds of women and girls, nearly all during medical appointments, at Michigan State University and with USA Gymnastics.

The plea deals in Ingham and Eaton counties called for Nassar's minimum sentence to be set between 25 and 40 years in prison. The deals did not set a maximum and both judges sentenced Nassar to a minimum of 40 years in prison.

Those sentences would be served after Nassar completes the 60-year federal sentence on three child pornography convictions, a provision imposed by U.S. District Judge Janet Neff, meaning he would have to live well past age 100 to begin serving his state sentences.

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Last week Aquilina has declined a request to remove herself from the Ingham County case case. She did so during a hearing on motions to remove her from the case and to have him resentenced, both filed by Nassar's court-appointed appellate attorneys.

Nassar's attorneys have asked Ingham County Circuit Court Chief Judge Richard Garcia to review their motion, arguments by the Michigan Attorney General's Office and Aquilina's decision. No hearing date for the resentencing motion has been set.

In February, Cunningham sentenced Nassar to 40 to 125 years in prison on three sexual assault charges, bringing to a close his criminal cases. It was the third and final time he had been sentenced in an eight-week stretch, all by female judges.

The Eaton Count sentencing hearing took three days, the first two filled with victim-impact statements from dozens of women and girls, some of whom had spoken during the Ingham County sentencing two weeks earlier.

Nassar's attorneys argued, in their motion on Monday, that Cunningham "was asked to impose the highest possible minimum term under the plea agreement not just based on the victims' and other speakers' emotional reaction to the sentencing offenses, but based on all sorts of factors beyond the individual circumstances of the offender and the offenses for which he was sentenced."

They added that many speakers went beyond Nassar's conduct and called for changes to the legal system, MSU and USA Gymnastics, and said that Assistant Attorney General Angela Povilaitis, who has since taken a new job, spent much of her closing statement on the need for cultural change regarding sexual assault and the hope that the Nassar case would have an impact.

Those factors and the "highly publicized case" resulted in "inappropriate pressure" on Cunningham give Nassar the highest possible sentence under the plea agreement, his attorneys argued in the motion.

They also argued that Nassar should be allowed to serve his Eaton County sentence at the same time as his federal sentence.

Unlike in Ingham County where Nassar's attorneys filed a separate motion to disqualify Aquilina, his attorneys simply included that request in the motion for a new Eaton County sentence.

"Judge Cunningham having already been exposed to the improper factors can be reasonably expected to have substantial difficulty in putting these out of her mind," Nassar's attorneys wrote. "Re-assignment is advisable to preserve the appearance of justice, and the reassignment would not entail waste and duplication out of proportion to any gain in preserving the appearance of fairness."

Court officials said a hearing on the motion has been set for Thursday, Sept. 6 in Cunningham's courtroom.

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